‘Gen­i­tal mutilator’ to ap­ply for bail

It is a very im­por­tant day in our coun­try. How­ever, it’s very un­for­tu­nate that we don’t re­spect it. The day should bring us to­gether ir­re­spec­tive of our pol­i­tics or re­li­gion and bring about rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. The day should also show our unique­ness as Ba­sotho. A DAN­ISH busi­ness­man ar­rested for al­legedly sur­gi­cally re­mov­ing and freez­ing the gen­i­tals of 21 women will ap­ply for bail on Mon­day next week in the Bloem­fontein Mag­is­trate Court.

Peter Fred­erik­sen (63) was ar­rested two weeks ago af­ter po­lice made the grue­some dis­cov­ery at his Bloem­fontein house fol­low­ing a tip-off, al­legedly by his wife from Le­sotho.

The po­lice also found sur­gi­cal equip­ment and over 500 photos of the women he had al­legedly per­formed the illegal surg­eries on.

Fred­erik­sen al­legedly lured women, mostly from Le­sotho, to his home be­fore se­dat­ing and per­form­ing fe­male cir­cum­ci­sions on them, keep­ing the sev­ered parts as tro­phies.

“I don’t want to com­ment on a case that is be­ing han­dled by the South African Po­lice Ser­vice be­cause I don’t know the de­tails. I can only re­port that Mr Fred­erik­sen’s wife, who is a Mosotho, re­ported an ag­gra­vated as­sault case It is im­por­tant be­cause, as a coun­try, we are in­de­pen­dent and free. The way the day is cel­e­brated is also of im­por­tance; we are re­minded of where we come from. I will be fix­ing a road in my vil­lage of Ha-marak­abei on that day. on 18 June 2015,” said Se­nior In­spec­tor Molefe.

The wife had since aban­doned the cou­ple’s two chil­dren aged two and four and come to Maseru. The chil­dren were re­port­edly be­ing cared for by so­cial work­ers in Bloem­fontein, where the cou­ple lived.

Fred­erik­sen, who op­er­ates a fire­man busi­ness in Maseru, ap­peared be­fore the Bloem­fontein Mag­is­trate’s Court on Mon­day this week charged with as­sault with in­tent to cause griev­ous bod­ily harm, pos­ses­sion and man­u­fac­ture of child pornog­ra­phy, pos­ses­sion of hu­man It’s im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that we were once a pro­tec­torate of Bri­tain. What’s crit­i­cal, how­ever, is for those who or­gan­ise the com­mem­o­ra­tions to do it prop­erly. If peo­ple don’t see the rel­e­vance of the day, the or­gan­is­ers are partly to blame. tis­sue and con­tra­ven­tion of the South African Medicine Act.

Ac­cord­ing to South African media re­ports, he ap­peared via au­dio­vi­sual link and did not phys­i­cally ap­pear in court. The pre­sid­ing mag­is­trate post­poned the case to next week Mon­day for a for­mal bail ap­pli­ca­tion.

Fred­erik­sen is also al­legedly wanted in Den­mark for illegal firearm trans­ac­tions.

Mean­while, mem­bers of the African Na­tional Congress Women’s League (ANCWL) and the public demon­strated out­side the court on Mon­day de­mand­ing that Fred­erik- sen be de­nied bail.

The New Age quotes the ANCWL’S Motheo re­gional chair­per­son, Ma­paseka Nkoane, say­ing they did not want the sus­pect to be granted bail be­cause of over­whelm­ing ev­i­dence against him.

“As women, we are an­gry, dis­ap­pointed, even con­fused with the pri­vate parts of women found in the freezer and we want jus­tice to be served,” Ms Nkoane said.

Eye­wit­ness News re­ported on Tues­day that a woman who was al­legedly vic­tim­ized by Fred­erik­sen had come for­ward fol­low­ing a po­lice call.